This website provides an introduction to the cultural
and natural
landscape of Wood Creek, Oneida County, New York - one of the premier
heritage areas of North America.

The information presented here was derived from
a research project at the New York State Museum - The Durham Project
- undertaken from 1983 to 2000. This project attempted to
document
an era of inland navigation improvements and canals that predated the Erie
Canal. This era began with the formation of the Western Inland Lock Navigation
Company in 1792 and ended with the replacement of that
company’s works by the Erie Canal in 1820.

Note: The
"Feature" titles in this presentation are preserved on each of the
"slides" following so
they can be easily extracted and used as illustrations independently of
the rest. Each "slide" is just a large JPEG image.

Phil
Lord, 9/2012

This
project included field research all along the
navigation
between Albany and Oswego, with intensive field surveys along Wood
Creek, where the greatest archeological survival of features from the
pre-Erie era was found. An archive of over 1,200 document copies,
including manuscript texts, historic maps, and early stereo air
photographs, supported this study.

A
goal of the project was to identify previously unknown or undocumented
archeological sites and to integrate these into regional resource
management plans and initiatives. The purpose of this website, adapted
from slide shows presented to the public in the 1990s, is to
promote the
protection, public access and educational interpretation of
this heritage resources.

This
presentation will describe discrete areas and spaces along Wood Creek,
which will be called “features”.
These features may contain the
following:
1) Surviving historic archeological sites,
2) Intact natural landmarks of historic importance,
3) Natural landscapes documented in the historic record.

During
most of the 18th century, boats arriving at Fort Stanwix (Rome) were
portaged to Wood Creek and then placed into the tiny channel of the
creek below the dam of a mill pond. This pond was built by Dominick
Lynch in the mid-18th century. Since the stream was so shallow boats
often lay grounded in mud, the boatmen would ask the miller to
release water from the pond to carry their boat down the stream channel
to deeper water.

This
important site is now embedded in an area of urban development along
Erie Boulevard at the west end of the City of Rome. The location of the
millpond and dam, at and north of Dominick Street, are still evident in
the topography of the ground through which Wood Creek runs, and Wood
Creek can still be seen passing under Erie Boulevard in a culvert. The
stream bed was slightly realigned many years ago.

Due
to the wet ground at the landing, a wharf was built along the stream
bank so that boats could be conveniently reloaded and reboarded in
preparation for the journey west, as shown on the mid-18th century map
(rotated to match north). The batteaux waiting on the stream bank can
be seen. This site is, as far as we can tell, now buried under fill for
parking lots adjacent to industrial buildings at the edge of the
wetland to the west.

Historically
speaking, this is one of the most interesting and significant sites
along the inland navigation passageway, since all the boats and
travelers, soldiers and civilians alike, stopped here to load and
unload boats passing east and west on the Great Oneida Carrying Place
up until 1797, when the Rome Canal was completed.

Built in 1797 by the Western
Inland Lock Navigation Company, presided
over by General Philip Schuyler, New York’s first canal company, the
Rome Canal connected the Upper Mohawk River to the east with the tiny
channel of Wood Creek to the west, running right through what is today
the City of Rome.

In
1817, when the Erie canal was built, it went along almost the same line
through the City, and can today be followed as Erie Boulevard. But it
followed a slightly flatter curve west of Fort Stanwix, leaving a small
portion of the Rome Canal intact as a shallow arc north of the new
canal.

Today an alleyway behind the Burger King lies on top of this curving
line of the old canal.

The
1797 Rome Canal was only the second true canal built in New York State;
the first being the Little Falls Canal, completed in 1795. This
painting portrays a Canadian canal of later date passing a Durham boat;
in every aspect identical to the canal at Rome.

One
can stand at the end of this alleyway and imagine canal boats passing
up and down the canal 200 years ago. These canal boats were Durham
Boats, large river freighters seen in the painting at the right, done
by an eyewitness on the Mohawk River in 1807. The scene here at the
alleyway in Rome might have looked something like the one shown at left
on the narrow canals of England, for the boat and lock dimensions are
the same there today as in Rome in 1797.

In fact, Durham boats and English narrow boats probably have the same
common English riverboat ancestor in the early 1700s.

Although
just an alleyway, this spot in Rome allows one to recreate, in their
imagination, what canal navigation would look like if the old 1797 Rome
Canal had continued to evolve, the way the narrow canals had in England.

But
our focus is Wood Creek, so we should look to the west, where boats
first entered the creek below Lynch’s millpond (above, left).

At
the west end of the mile long Rome Canal was a lock, which allowed
boats to pass out into the natural channel of Wood Creek. The creek
entered the canal as a feeder just above the lock, in its natural
alignment, but the rest of the old channel was left to wander south of
the new canal, possibly used as a mill race.

Today this complex is nearly lost in the remains of the later Erie
Canal and urban construction along Erie Boulevard.

This
late 19th century map (above, left) reconstructs all the past waterways
in this location and shows that once the Erie Canal was built, Wood
Creek was realigned to enter that canal to the west of its original
location. That alignment is still preserved today. It does not predate
the 1820s, however.

In
tracing the original and historic navigation channel of Wood Creek, it
is of interest to note that it does not appear on modern maps. Such
maps indicate “Wood Creek” to run directly west from the old
landing site. In fact, this is the channel of the Erie Canal. The main
flow of Wood Creek was diverted into the old abandoned Erie Canal years
ago and ever since has appeared this way on maps.

In fact, historic Wood Creek runs through the empty space on the map
south of the railroad.

The
discovery of the components of the old Wood Creek navigation in this
area was the result of several years of concentrated
research and
field survey in a sprawling wetland area in the southwestern part of
the city (above).

The
landmark by which features within this study area can be located on air
photographs and modern maps is an abandoned double-Y intersection of
the old railroad. This railroad alignment runs atop an elevated
embankment some distance above the wetland.

The
first feature of significance is the original Wood Creek channel
downstream (west) of the landing (pre-1797) and the lower lock of the
Rome Canal (post-1797). The subtle nature of this historic channel is
seen in the field photo above, right. It is important to remember that
the largest boats using this navigation needed less than two feet of
water in a channel that could be as narrow as ten feet!

The area
in which the search was made exhibits many old channels, some
water-filled, as well as numerous ditches and drainage features of
varied ages.

It
was determined that this study area contained within it also the site
of the fourth lock of a series built by the Western Inland Lock
Navigation Company between 1802 and 1803. It was clear this lock and
its micro-canal, were cut across a meander loop of the original creek
channel. Remote sensing analysis, primarily using historic maps and
early stereo air photos (1938, 1948, 1949 and 1968), the evaluation of
early manuscript correspondence from the construction sites in 1802 and
1803, followed up by field survey, produced in the end
a mapping of the original Wood Creek navigation channel east
of the
railroad Y. (above in green).

The
next task was to locate and document the remains of the actual lock
structure, canal and associated artificial works inserted into the
location in 1803.

The
1803 canal channel was fairly easy to confirm, since it exists as a
straight, relatively
deep (<3'), and water-filled cut across the loop of the
old bed. Profiles of all the remnant channels were made, and while much
of the water of Wood Creek had been diverted into the Erie Canal
trough, the channel profiles in the wetland indicated an original depth
of between 16 and 24 inches which would have supported boat traffic 200
years ago.

In
the spring, the location of the canal is easily seen (above,
center) by the early growth of wetland vegetation promoted by the
sub-surface water in the canal.

At
first the search for the wooden lock remains at the west end of the
canal cut were not expected to reveal anything. It appeared that the
deep cuts made for construction of the elevated railroad embankment,
which created deep waterfilled channels running along the sides of the
embankment, had eradicated the lock site, since the old channel seemed
to run directly into that excavation.

But
closer, more critical examination of the field evidence revealed that
in fact the original channel of Wood Creek was a more easterly one,
which
entered the canal a small distance short of the railroad excavation
damage. Thus the 1803 junction of the old creek with the new (1803)
canal and lock structure was still intact.

However, there was
still doubt that any wooden remains of these structures could survive
in a shallow wetland where water levels fluctuated seasonally.

We
had specially constructed polished steel probes made for the purpose of
searching for submerged timber remains in the wetland, and using these
we found approximately one half of the estimated 100 foot long timber
lock structure still in place about 3 feet beneath the water and muck
in the canal cut channel. The western half had, apparently, been
chopped through in the later 1800s when the railroad was built (above
photo looking through the lock from east to west with railroad
embankment in the background).

What
we had found was the double-thickness flooring of the lock chamber,
which we knew sat on foot thick beams, on top of foot thick sills, on
top of 8-10 foot long piles driven into the mud. Thus over 12 feet of
timber is preserved beneath the ground here, so long as water levels
remain high enough to maintain saturation and an oxygen-free
environment.

Attention
was next drawn to the site of the dam, which would have served to
divert water from the old channel into the new canal. We knew from
letters written by the contractor that this dam was to be set at the
head of a shallow called “Mile
Riff”. There was no evidence of rifts or
shoals in the stream today, its bottom and banks being mostly clay and
silt. By recreating a lost 1802 map from the original survey book found
in the State Library, we found the location of “Mile Riff”. This is
a
place where the creek broke through a gravel knoll, distributing debris
downstream to form the shoal area.

Examination of the bottom
near the east end of the canal (above, top, right) revealed an area
just to the north of that junction where the creek was very shallow (c.
1 foot). It
became abruptly deeper (about 2.5 feet) at the north end of the
suspected rift site. And
probing in the south section of the shallow revealed the intact remains
of the wooden dam structure. Measured depths to timber contact became
gradually less, indicating the sloping face of the old dam (typical
18th century design, above, right).

Of
great interest is the fact that the field contractor in 1802 proposed
to apply a form of erosion control along the old bed of the creek above
the lock that he had seen used in England, and described it in some
detail.

It consisted of brush mats, cris-crossed with
saplings, and held against the creek banks and bottom with long stakes
of split oak. These stakes had holes drilled through near the top and
pins were put through the holes to secure the brush. The stakes were
then driven down into the mud. Archeological remains of identical
structures have been excavated in England, but this is the first known
US application of this type of erosion control, still used today on
some rivers in the US. (For
a full treatment of this engineering
site, read "Brush
Piling: Eighteenth Century English Engineering in an American
Wilderness", Philip Lord & Chris Salisbury, AIA:
Industrial Archaeology Review (published in the UK), Vol.
XIX, 1997, pp. 49-60.)

Historic
letters from the field indicated that a section of the old stream
channel immediately downstream from Lock 4 was to be deepened in 1803
to prevent silting, and such a straightened channel appeared on early
air photos (above, left of railroad embankment).

Field
survey confirmed the existence of the channelized segment of the Wood
Creek navigation running across the ancient floodplain of the stream.
At some distance to the west, the meandering of the old stream channel
could be seen again.

While
this feature seems to be little more than a ditch (looking across it,
above), of the same type often dug by farmers to drain soggy fields,
there is no doubt this is part of the improved Wood Creek navigation. A
profile of it shows that it is about 23 feet wide and at its center it
is over two feet deep, which is sufficient to float the largest boats
that used this navigation 200 years ago (requiring a maximum of two
feet and width of only 10 feet).

In the spring, this
excavated channel can be clearly seen in the field (above), running
west from the elevated railroad embankment (aboive, right).

(Note:
most of the air photos used in this research were from the 1938 and
1948-9 stereo series, which revealed the best evidence in a relatively
treeless environment.)

West from the end of this
improved natural channel is a segment of the unimproved natural
channel. This was slightly easier to trace because the surrounding
floodplain had fewer extraneous channels within it. However, one can
see the “ghosts” of prehistoric stream alignments for Wood Creek just
to the north of the one we mapped.

Although
this archeological remnant of the historic Wood Creek navigation
channel seems insignificant as a heritage site, one should recall that
in few places can you stand beside so tiny a feature and
realize
that every historic person you have read about that traveled by boat
west or east before the Erie Canal was built, passed right past the
toes of your boots - from early native inhabitants, to explorers and
traders, to the military expeditions of the French and Indian War and
the American Revolution, and all their famous Generals, to the Loyalist
refugees, the settlers and merchants of the new nation, the military
supply boats of the War of 1812, and the final waves of migrants in the
years just before the Erie Canal.

The
sum of this research has revealed a complex of historic waterways, from
the original 18th century Wood Creek boat channel, to the improved
channel in the early 1800s, to various early drainage ditches designed
to drain off stagnant waters from the Erie Canal.

And the fact that this historic complex of features exists in virtual
obscurity, in an area where modern
maps show nothing at all, cannot be overlooked.

Downstream
a short distance is the site of Fort Bull, and later on the same site,
Fort Wood Creek. This fort was established to guard the waterway and
the end of the low water portage from the Mohawk, when boats could not
be sent loaded down the stream from the landing near Lynch’s pond.
Empty boats were navigated down to the fort landing while people and
cargo went overland. Thus this was a strategic location on the route.

This
fort was attacked and destroyed by the French in 1756 and immediately
rebuilt, and now is an adjunct site at the rear of the Erie Canal
Village Museum.

The
waterway configuration here is deceptive, for Wood Creek again has been
diverted into a modern alignment. A ditch has been dug to carry the
stream more or less due west, where originally it made a long loop
northward to run up against the site of the fort (see 1899 map, and
look carefully at the 1938 air photo).

In
fact it was this proximity to the fort that was a feature of this
section of the stream, for a pond was formed here to facilitate the
landing of boats on a “beach” right at the front of the fort itself.
The map above, right was drawn with south at the top, so things appear
reversed.

The photo above shows the fort remains, which are
still perfectly preserved along the old Wood Creek channel, during the
initial construction of the Erie Canal Village Museum.

Of
interest here is the waterway complex of dam and pond, which was built
to help military batteaux into the lower portion of Wood Creek during
the campaigns of the French and Indian War. The dam was no doubt built
of timber crib-work standing between earthen abutments that tied its
ends to the opposite banks. The pond, long since drained, remains as a
wetland. But the outline of that pond,
and the earthen remains of the abutments of the dam, still can be
clearly seen at the
site. (The historic map has been rotated to place match the air photo,
with north at the top.)

Below
(west of) Fort Bull the Wood Creek channel runs through more elevated
lands and so is more defined. One can still walk alongside the stream
and experience what so many people did during the period before the
Erie Canal, when this same channel passed hundreds of civilian and
military batteaux as well as the later Durham boats.

Here
is encountered the site of the third (chronologically) of the four
wooden locks built on the stream in 1802 and 1803. This one had been
overrun, unfortunately, by the original Erie Canal and the enlarged
Erie Canal in the 1820s and 40s, so that remains of it appear to have
been lost.

The
original Erie Canal (1817) crossed Wood Creek here at right angles,
forcing an elbow in the alignment that avoided completely the 1802 lock
and dam complex (above, left). However the later enlargement (above,
right) ran over the stream in a more straight alignment on a
longer culvert, and appears to have destroyed the site entirely. The
height of embankments here cause the base of fill to be quite broad. It
is possible that archeological remains are preserved under this fill,
but the historic nature of the Erie Canal itself would prevent removal
for excavation.

The
site is, however, easily accessible via the Erie Canal walking trail
that runs along the tow path of the old canal, and thus provides a good
interpretive overlook for the earlier Wood Creek lock site.

Coincidentally,
one of the original four sluices, built in the French and Indian War
period, also existed on this spot. The topographic features that
favored lock construction (narrow channel between high banks) may also
have favored this early dam construction as well. This 1750s site was
possibly destroyed during construction of the 1802 lock, but certainly
later by the Erie Canal.

While
the logs of this dam rotted away centuries ago, the physical evidence
of why the location was selected for a mid-18th century dam - narrow
and high-sided passage - remain. Natural sites that played a part in
history are just as significant as man-made landscape modifications.

Below
the site of Lock #3 is found a very picturesque and historically intact
segment of Wood Creek. Here one can really get a dramatic impression of
how small, congested and seemingly impassable this stream was, and yet
come to understand that it fully functioned as a navigation route even
for the largest Durham boats. These boats, although 60 feet long, were
only 8 feet wide and drew about 2 feet of water when fully loaded. This
channel is about 22 feet wide and in the center is a section about 12
feet wide and 3 feet deep.

The perpetual problem with Wood Creek
was, of course, the trees that continually fell into it and had to be
annually cut out of the channel. This was because the banks of the
stream were never cleared and trees grew right up to water's edge.

Immediately
west of this section, and close to the modern highway, is a place to
glimpse the character of the original navigation, where travelers in
the summer of 1793 remarked: “The creek
is so small that the branches of the trees on the opposite banks unite
overhead.” Most of this part of Wood Creek is in
its original condition as it was when navigated 200 years ago.

The
site of Lock #2 in Wood Creek is one of the most significant from both
an historic/environmental and an archeological perspective.

The
lock was built into a cut made across of neck of land inside a sharp
meander of the stream. The entire site exists in its original
environmental condition on private land a short distance from the
highway (note 18th century road on 1803 map above).

The
canal cut, into which the lock was built, was dug through the edge of a
fairly high knoll, and thus is most dramatic in terms of its
micro-topography. One can stand on the bank of Wood Creek as it flows
north and practically see the creek at the other side as it flows south.

Probing
between downed trees through ice and mud in the early spring of 1991
revealed that the entire structure of the lock floor and underpinnings
still was preserved under about three feet of water and mud inside the
cut. Over this area of about 100 feet in length, consistent and solid
timber contacts were encountered by the probe at 36 inches, whereas
outside this area there was no contact to a depth in excess of six feet.

Research confirms that nothing has changed here since 1802, and this
sunken lock structure is, therefore, the oldest wooden lock in
existence in New York, and perhaps in North America.

In
some ways the most interesting of the series is Lock #1, which was
started in 1802 under the direct field supervision of General Philip
Schuyler, President of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company. He
stayed at the junction of Wood Creek and Canada Creek during the summer
of 1802 and kept a diary and notes on the progress of this, the first
built of the four new locks in Wood Creek.

The site
(i.e., physical environment) of this lock is intact but more ambiguous
than Lock #2. It appears to be built on the same model, however, of a
dam in the old channel and a lock in a new cut or mini-canal.

A
sketch found in the Schuyler Papers on the back of a letter written in
1803 (above) seems to be of this very site and fits the field
configuration.

The
dual channel shows up best in the earliest air photographs, and also in
the field. While evidence suggests the artificial cut channel was the
more northerly, the stream has presently reclaimed the original channel
and left this canal cut relatively dry. (The site has not been
inspected since the damaging storms of 2011, so the extent to which it
has suffered is, at this time, unknown.)

Just
narrowly missed by the reconstruction of the Route 49 bridge, which is
only a few feet from the downstream end of the lock complex, this site
nonetheless preserves the 1802 topography and environmental setting. It
probably also preserves archeological remains as well, although the
lack of standing water over the lock site may have reduced its
subsurface preservation. Initial attempts to locate it by probing
in the 1990s failed.

The
entrance of Canada Creek from the north into the Wood Creek channel
increased its capacity by a considerable amount. It was here that even
in the dry season boats could be reloaded and progress westward with
relative ease. Because of its location at the west end of the dry
weather portage road eastward, this spot was always a stopping place,
and a small British fort - Fort Rickey - was placed opposite the
junction in the 1750s.

Later,
during the 1790s and into the early 1800s, taverns were located at the
junction. Armstrong’s to the west, was initially a farmhouse, which
entertained travelers, while Ranny’s, to the east, was apparently a
public house from the start. Later a man named Gilbert took over the
Ranny’s tavern and developed the area, with a sawmill and store
(warehouse).

A
painting discovered by the project a few years ago in Rhode Island
shows the Gilbert complex as it looked in 1815. The viewpoint is
looking eastward from the west end of the bridge over Canada Creek,
with the bridge over Wood Creek in foreground, right. (The road may
have been closer to Wood Creek in that period.)

General Schuyler
may have stayed in one of these buildings in 1802 as he supervised the
construction of Lock #1. The small building in the foreground may be
the storehouse of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company mentioned
in some accounts.

This
area is today largely undeveloped agricultural land. Yet in its day,
200 years ago, it was the hub of the transportation system connecting
the lands west to the gateway to the Mohawk Valley to the east. It
remains an area of potentially important archeological research, some
of which has already been completed.

The
1815 painting of the place discovered a while ago reveals yet another
hidden detail of this series of wooden locks on Wood Creek. In letters
from General Schuyler and his contractors, we know the locks were built
with a framed superstructure that locked together overhead, as
shown above, left, for a similar lock built later in the
Crooked Lake Canal.

But
of most note is the extraordinary fact that the locks were roofed over,
like New England covered bridges, and were painted. A detail of the
1815 painting of the Canada Creek junction reveals that what may have
at first been mistaken in the
background for a
large rock or barn, is in fact the roof of Lock #1! (For
a full treatment of these locks,
read "The
Covered Locks of Wood Creek", Philip Lord, IA:
The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, Vol.
27, No. 1, 2002, pp. 5-15)

The
first layer of historic sites in Wood Creek are those built during the
French and Indian War, including forts and navigation “sluices”. Here
at Canada Creek we have both in the same place; Fort Rickey on the
knoll to the south and the site of the navigation dam ("sluice") in the
creek opposite.

Until recently a replica of the fort was in
place on its original site, as part of the Fort Rickey Game Farm
establishment. The knoll on which the original fort stood is still
clearly visible within the game farm property.

Some
distance downstream from Fort Rickey, through an area where the Wood
Creek channel is perfectly preserved as it was 200 years ago, we come
to the first of 13 mini-canals; cuts made across necks of land by the
WILNC for navigation purposes in the summer of 1793.

The
first of these is also the most classic in form and in some ways the
best preserved. It shows up on historic maps, and on early air
photographs, as an egg-shaped, north-trending loop of the stream, cut
off at its neck.

In
addition to the shallowness of water, Wood Creek presented another
obstacle to navigation - a twisting and narrow channel. This meant not
only delay, for the water route was many times longer than the land
route, if a land route had existed, but also meant that driftwood
and sand collected in the crooks and the work of navigating was made
greater.

General
Schuyler contracted with a man from Cayuga to make 13 cuts across the
worst meanders. Only one map, drawn in 1796 (above), three years after
they were finished, shows all 13 completed.

A detail of that map
shows the first of the 13 in place at a location that today is next to
Route 49. This cut is the most typical of the 13 in many ways and the
most accessible.

These
mini-canals, some of the oldest artificial waterways in North America,
were created with hand tools at work camps in the wilderness,
accessible only by boat.

The process was first to cut the trees
off the proposed route of the cut and stockpile the logs, Next the
roots were dug up and a ditch ten feet deep was dug across the neck.
This ditch filled with water and could be carefully navigated at that
point. Then the logs were used to build dams in the old channel of Wood
Creek, closing off its water supply. When the next heavy rains or
spring freshets came, they carved out the primitive ditch to the full
size of the natural channel, and the stream was thus realigned, forming
the “canal”.

This dramatic and unprecedented project reduced the journey by six
miles. The level of preservation is seen in an
example above further downstream (not Cut #1).

The
lands along Wood Creek were so low and poor that few camping places
existed, and boat travelers usually tried to get all the way through
from one end to the other in one day. A height of ground downstream
from Cut #1 became the only spot of any significance used for camping
along the route from Canada Creek to the edge of Oneida Lake.

During
the French and Indian War, and later in the Revolution, military
expeditions traveling in fleets of batteaux stopped at a place called
“Oak Orchard”
- a sandy hill next to the stream that was covered with a
grove of oak trees. At this place there was also a spring - one of the
only fresh water sources on the entire
journey.

This
place is mentioned in many accounts of the period as a landmark, but it
could never be found. It appeared on no maps and location data was
vague. Detective work finally located the spot, which later became a
burying ground that also had been lost to memory. The spot is today
restored as an historic burying ground, with public access and
maintenance managed by the Town of Verona. The tiny spring mentioned in
accounts still exists.

“Oak
Orchard” is also adjacent to Cut #2 of the 13 1793 Wood Creek cuts,
perfectly preserved. The early map above shows the stream
channel as it ran before it was cut in 1793.

But one of the most
interesting stories connected to this spot came about because it also
was selected by General Schuyler as the site of a wooden lock that was
never built.

So
sure was he that a lock would be built here, to overcome the rift that
existed there, that in 1802 he had a house constructed for the lock
tender. The house was built but the lock never was.

During the
building of the house, in a foundation trench, the body of a baby in a
cradle was dug up. It was the daughter of a French couple who had moved
to the farmsite in 1796 or 97 and whose infant had died, the first
non-Indian child born in Oneida County. Lacking a
coffin, they buried her in her cradle, to be found again in 1802. She
was promptly reburied. This “Legend
of Celeste”
has long been recorded in the histories of Oneida County.

The
aerial view above shows the rift in Wood Creek, the present farm on the
same site where “Celeste” was born, and the sandy hill of “Oak Orchard”
between that house and the creek, where remains of the lock tender's
house stood in 1802.

A
bit downstream is Cut #3 in the series. This feature is barely visible
on modern maps (above, left) among the numerous meander scars and
ditches of the area.

It is much more evident, however, on old aerial photographs, above, and
in the field. Cut #2 is to the right and #3 to the left.
(The aerial color photo used to illustrate Cut #1 is actually of this
cut.)

Both
Cut #2 and #3 exist in areas where they have remained relatively intact
sine 1793, when they were no longer part of the active Wood Creek. By
studying the channels within the abandoned meanders of the creek
(pre-1793), where the bottom of the streambed is only a couple feet
below the floodplain, one can understand the geology of the valley,
since the modern stream (from 1793 to present) is often more than 20
feet below the floodplain today.

Evidence suggests that up to
1793, when forests were intact across the region, runoff was slow and
erosion was minimal. Since then, with deforestation, the rapid runoff
has cut the channel of Wood Creek deeply into the earth.

Cut
#4 is also clearly evident, with a stream entering it from the south.
This stream has continued to cut down the western half of the old
meander, creating a more defined ox-bow than found in other cut sites.

It
is important to understand that while these 13 mini-canals began as
mere ditches, a few feet wide and ten feet deep, they have evolved
through time as the rest of the creek evolved, so that the “canals”
today cannot be differentiated from any other part of the main stream
channel (above).

A
short distance downstream from Cut #4 the creek is overrun by the
construction of the Barge Canal, built in the early 20th century. In
this section was Cut #5. One sharp and elongated meander that would
seem to be a good candidate for cutting exists here, but is also shown
on the 1796 map just east of the actual cut.

The problem was that in the space west of that meander, maps showed no
evidence of a cut-off loop of the stream.

Remote
sensing imagery did, however, confirm a very shallow meander in this
location, somewhat attenuated by plowing, and therefore missed in
topographic mapping. Analysis proved that this is in fact Cut #5 and it
remains preserved in the landscape just short of the Barge Canal feeder
ditch taken off the creek.

The
next segment of Wood Creek has been overrun by Barge Canal
construction, including diversion ditches and dredging spoils lagoons
that have all but eliminated evidence of the old channel alignment.
This alignment does continue to be mapped, however, and some remnants
are still observable within the construction impact zone.

It
is in this zone that two additional 1793 cuts existed prior to Barge
Canal construction. Evidence for these is found on a pre-Barge Canal
mapping of the stream done in 1899 as well as numerous detailed barge
canal construction plans.

Unfortunately, little if any visible evidence of these sites exists
today.

Although
preliminary maps for the Barge Canal show the proposed route going
right through Cut #8, the final route missed it by the narrowest
margin.

Impacts to the location exist from ditching and spoils lagoon
construction, but the loop of the original stream can still be
confirmed from early air photos. (Note: the black and white air photos
are from stereo pairs dating to 1938 and 1948-49.)

A more ambiguous situation is found at Cut #9, where some migration of
the Wood Creek alignment after 1793 seems to have clouded details of
the site. Note that location of these cuts is determined by matching up
the entire section of Wood Creek alignment near the cut, with its
particular twists and turns, with "modern" air photos. Even when
meanders are rendered somewhat abstractly, as above, the stability of
the creek channel leaves no doubt about where a mapped feature existed.

Originally thought to be in another location, the site of Cut #10 is
one of the smallest, yet most dramatic of the series. Piles of dirt
excavated in 1793 to create the cut can still be seen on the margins of
the old channel here and it remains one of the most instructive of the
sites, from an engineering archeology standpoint.

It is just downstream from this cut that one of the better preserved
sections of creek channel can be found. Due to its proximity here to
the road, the creek can be viewed without difficulty, and the
meandering patterns of the channel can be clearly seen.

Although a completely unmodified natural landscape, the fact that the
stream exists here as it did when the historic passages were made by
the thousands of players in American history, who moved by boat between
Lake Ontario and Albany and vice versa, this becomes as much a
significant heritage
site as a ruin or reconstructed fort. To be able to stand and view, or
take canoe or kayak into these waters, is to re-experience history
where it happened, and to touch the past.

The site of Cuts #11 and #12 remains the most enigmatic of
the series. From the description of an eyewitness in 1793, when the
cuts were under construction, Cut #11 “…is very
short” and “…shortens a
fourth of a mile” while Cut #12 “…is not over
five toises long [c.
30 feet],
yet it saves a mile and a quarter…”

The
configuration of the cutting and old channel in this location is shown
on the 1796 map, and is confirmed to be accurate by modern DOT mapping
and the 1899 survey. But it does not seem to fit the verbal description
of 1793, and a more detailed contemporaneous map has yet to be found to
resolve the ambiguity.

But one thing is clear. Cut #12 eliminated the well known “Neck on Wood Creek”,
a northward trending loop of the stream that was one of the few
meanders actually shown on British military maps of the 18th century.

Much of the original configuration of Wood Creek in this area is
obscured by ground disturbance associated with the construction of the
Barge Canal in the early 20th century.

What does remain in place, and is even navigable from the Barge Canal
by small boat, is the historic cut itself that in 1793 eliminated the
greatest inconvenience on the creek - “The Neck on Wood Creek”.

Cut #13, the last of the 1793 series, appears to have been completely
destroyed by the construction of the Barge Canal.

Further down the Wood Creek navigation, below the 13 cuts and
approaching the junction with Fish Creek, is found a combination
natural/cultural landmark mentioned in traveler’s journals of the
period - Dean’s Landing.

James Dean was an interpreter for negotiations with the Indians of the
region, primarily the Oneidas, during the 18th century. He was the
first white man to penetrate the Wood Creek wilderness for permanent
settlement, in the summer of 1783. This was at the end of the
Revolutionary War and ten years before the first improvements to the
navigation. For his service, the Oneidas gave Dean a small tract along
the north side of Wood Creek, where he proposed, with a brass founder
and silversmith named Phelps, to set up trade with the Oneidas and
other western Indians.

In 1784 they apparently completed two log buildings - a house and metal
working shop which also contained a forge. There is some evidence at
the site that a mill race to power the forge was begun along the stream
which ran into Wood Creek from the north, because a small twisting
brook running south toward the site has what looks like the beginnings
of a mill-race cut straight through the loops of the stream.

In the spring of 1785 - only the next year - the place was
completely flooded. A
similar flood delayed the opening of the Barge Canal in the early
1990s. Dean and his family had to take a canoe to the second floor of
the forge to live until the water receded. They abandoned the property
immediately, but the clearing they had made was called thereafter
“Dean’s Landing”.

The mouth of the small stream that they built on forms here a natural
landing place for batteaux. Even in the 1990s, a well defined bank on
the intersecting stream looked like an superb place to dock a boat and
climb on shore. Landing here may have provided a shortcut overland to
Fish Creek
to the northwest.

It is also a landmark repeatedly mentioned in reference to Wood Creek
in
documents of the period. For example, in 1792 one traveler describes
navigation on the creek as follows: “...we
discovered a clearing, extended towards Fish Creek... known by the name
of Capt. Phillips' and Dean's improvements."

Fish Creek was much larger than Wood Creek and was navigable northward
for several miles. Yet it connected to nowhere of commercial or
military significance, so that navigation only had local importance.

There was a short canal cut made in lower Fish Creek in 1809 to
facilitate local navigation (above, right), but it is not known whether
this was among the efforts of the WILNC or not. Since it is not
mentioned in WILNC correspondence, it is believed to have been a local
initiative.

The actual historic junction of the two streams is now absorbed into
the Barge Canal (above, left).

On the last loop before entering Oneida Lake, there stood a British
blockhouse from the French and Indian War. This little wooden fort -
called the “Royal
Blockhouse” - burned in 1767. But the clearing and
burned ruins remained the only camping place on this heavily forested
section of Wood
Creek until 1796, when the Jacksons established a tavern nearby.

Travelers would often wait at the Royal Blockhouse site until the rough
waters of the lake calmed, usually in the evening, and then they would
row across the lake to the western end in darkness.

In 1796 Mr. And Mrs. Jackson built a house near the mouth of Wood
Creek, and by its location it became a popular stopping place for
boatmen and travelers. In about 1806, the man died, and his widow ran
the tavern until around 1812, when she remarried and moved away.

This building was the embryo from which the present village of Sylvan
Beach sprang up years later. It is now the terminus of the Barge Canal
cut section running west from Rome.

The mouth of Wood Creek at Jackson’s Tavern became an increasingly
important boat landing, especially after 1800 when the big Durham boats
began hauling heavy cargoes of wheat and salt eastward out of the
Ononadaga Lake and Seneca River region. But the shallow creek
frustrated boatmen, who often had to make several trips up to Rome with
partial loads to get their cargo to the Mohawk River.

Sometimes they just gave up and left the their freight in the woods.
George Scriba states in 1804: “In August
of 1803 there were not less than 500 barrels flour & salt at
Jackson’s landing, which were left there by boatmen unable to proceed
with their cargoes up Wood Creek.”

Boatmen coming west and used to shallow water navigation often feared
the open and deep waters of Oneida Lake. Entry into the lake was
partially blocked by a sand bar at the mouth of Wood Creek, and the
east end of the lake is still characterized by sand bars and sandy
beaches, resulting from driving winds out of the west.

Once in Oneida Lake, navigators found easier going in the westward
flowing waters of the Oneida and Oswego Rivers, with a few notable
exceptions.

For a detailed look at a journey along this inland waterway network in
1793, including observations of the first improvements to Wood Creek,
read "The Navigators: A Journal of Passage on the Inland Waterways of
New York - 1793" (P. Lord, 2003) available online at
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/staffpubs/docs/15621.pdf